6th Sunday of Easter

Acts 10:44-48

Acts 8:26-40

Happy Mother’s Day.

Certainly Mother’s Day is a fine time to talk about love, as would be Father’s Day. A mother’s love for her child, at its best, is the closest we may come to mimicking Godly love. Parents can forgive anything; parents can give without thought of return; parents are capable of laying down their lives for their children.

But to really practice Christian or Godly love, we must love other Mother’s children the same way we love our own. This is not so easy!

I’ve talked about giving to others and loving others the last two Sundays. And how many times over the years have I echoed Steve Schaitberger saying, “What part of all don’t we understand?”

There are churches, even Christian churches, that claim that the commandments to love and care for one another only apply to our own religious community. By implication, they would expect a merchant to deal fairly with any members of his own faith, but he would be free to cheat those who were “other.”

I think that the lessons from Acts we heard last week and this disprove any such notion. Last week we heard the story of Philip and the Eunuch. The Eunuch was studying scripture and was very interested in Judaism. However he could never become a Jew, not only because he was a Nubian (probably black skinned) and a gentile/pagan, but because as a Eunuch he was considered to be deformed, unclean, unable to ever enter the Temple.

Philip, directed by the Holy Spirit through an angel, was in the right place when the Eunuch’s chariot came along. Philip joined him and told him the Good News as a way of explaining a passage from Isaiah. When the Eunuch saw water along the road and said, “Why can’t I be baptized now?” Philip agreed. After all, if the spirit sent him hence, how could he refuse? And so the Eunuch was baptized into the new Way, the Way of following Jesus.

In today’s reading from Acts, we only hear the very last bit in a rather long story. Do you remember the story of Cornelius? It begins at the very beginning of Chapter 10. Cornelius was a centurion of the Italian Chohort. He was a devout man and who feared God. This refers to non-Jews who hung around the fringes of the Jewish community and were often referred to as God-fearers.

Acts goes on to say that he gave alms, prayed to God and so did his household. One day he clearly saw an Angel who told him to send to Joppa for Simon, called Peter, and told him where to find this Peter. So he sent some men to fetch Peter.

Meanwhile, Peter is on the roof where he is staying when he fell into a trance. He saw a sheet being lowered from heaven holding a variety of animals, all of which were forbidden by the Jewish dietary laws. Now Peter was hungry and a voice told him to kill and eat. But he replied, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” The voice replied, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

This exchange was repeated three times and then the sheet was drawn back up into heaven. While Peter was busy trying to figure out what this vision might mean, the men from Cornelius arrived at his door! And just in case he didn’t get the connection, the Spirit says to him, “Look, three men are searching for you. Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation, for I have sent them.”

So Peter does as he’s told. He invites the men in, gives them food and lodging for the night, and sets off with them the next morning, taking some of his Jewish followers with him.

At the home of Cornelius all of his household and some of his friends are gathered to hear what Peter has to say. And Peter does preach to them. See Acts 10:34-43. Now we arrive at today’s reading. While Peter was preaching to the gathered crowd, the Holy Spirit descended upon them, as she had on the disciples at Pentecost. The circumcised believers who accompanied Peter were astonished to see this, for they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Peter says, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” And he proceeded to baptize the whole crowd.

It’s worth noting that the verses following this story tell us that the believers in Jerusalem were upset by this, and they criticized Peter for doing the baptism. So then he has to explain the whole story to them.

So let’s think for a few moments about what all this means. Both Peter and Philip were born and raised as Jews. They had been taught exclusion from day one of their lives, because Jews lived surrounded by pagans or gentiles and they taught their children to think of them as “other” in order to keep the faith of Abraham pure.

Like wise they were taught from day 1 about the purity laws of Judaism. Those included among many other laws, laws about what animals could or couldn’t be eaten, laws about which people were ritually pure and which were not. Everything in their background and training would incline them to exclude the Eunuch and Cornelius and his household. They couldn’t even eat with such people! So how could they possible baptize them?

Philip and Peter had to put aside their early training, their parent’s instructions, their earlier Rabbi’s teaching, their own prejudices, their own distaste for non-Jews. They had to put aside their old attitudes and their assumptions in order to include these foreigners into the new community.

So we have to ask ourselves, how well do we do this? Would we be comfortable welcoming a black person to our church or our neighborhood? How about an illegal immigrant? How about a Muslim?

Next Sunday we’ll be welcoming guests from the Christian Bikers Association. What if they were Hell’s Angels?

I hope we can all remember how Peter and Phillip stepped up, out of themselves, into their new lives, in order to love some other Mother’s child.

And so must we. And so must we.

5th SUNDAY OF EASTER

1 John 4:7-21

Todays reading from the first letter of John says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”

Most of us have probably not quite reached the kind of perfection of love that John calls us to. I know that I still struggle with fearfulness, and often more so as I get older. But I’m convinced that the author of 1 John is right. I’d even go so far as to say that the opposite of love is not hate but fear.

Understand that I’m talking about Godly love here, agape in the Greek, not erotic love. Maybe the opposite of erotic love is hate, but the opposite of Godly love is fear.

Earlier this week I commented to someone that what stands between us and being able to love our neighbor as ourselves is fear and ego. Then I remembered a story I heard about man in AA who was doing the 5th Step. This step says: “admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.”

The requirement is to honestly list your character defects and to tell them to another person, sometimes a sponsor, sometimes a clergy person, but someone who can hold you accountable for honesty. This man described almost all his defects in terms of ego problems and when he finished, the person listening said, “What about your fear?”

“I’m not particularly fearful,” the man replied. But of course, all the ego issues could be related back to fear.

Insecurity, putting down others, seeking status, power, or wealth, seeking to hide the true self – all these involve fear.

So now I have to say that the one barrier to Godly love is fear. And I am convinced that a significant part of our spiritual journey is perfecting our ability to love all of our brothers and sister.

Jay Sidebotham, the rector of the church I attend in Chicago, is also a cartoonist. One of my favorites shows a family gathered around the dinner table – Mom, Dad, and two children. The young boy is saying grace, including this: “Dear God, I bet it’s hard to love everyone in the whole world. There are only four people in our family and I can never do it.!”

Godly love is hard. We need to remember that Godly love is more about respect and honoring the spirit of God in the other person than it is about liking them. You don’t have to be close friends with everyone, you don’t have to like everyone, you don’t even have to approve of everyone, as long as you can honor the spirit of God in them in spite of their “wrongness”

So how do we work towards this kind of love? There are two ways; one is to work on eliminating our fears and the other is to work on improving our ability to love others.

Both approaches require some self-awareness and self-honesty to begin. For example, ask yourself, “What do I fear?” What kinds of people make me fearful. What kinds of situations make me fearful. This self-assesment is always the first task.

Then it’s possible to work on those fears. I remember one day back in the 80’s when I left home in the car to begin a trip to Duluth or the Cities. As I pulled onto Highway 11, what flashed through my mind was a picture of me going into a ditch. This stunned me, because it had never happened to me before, and the picture made me afraid. I said to myself, “Maybe this is why older people often get so fearful. Well, I’m not going to pay attention to that image, I don’t want to live with that kind of fear.” Of course, that was not the end of it, but now I notice when things like that happen and I can stop myself from acting on it.

Another remedy is prayer. Ask God to help in your effort to cast out fear, to see God’s face in others, to help you be more mindful.

The same suggestions apply to developing your skill at Godly love. Start by asking questions of yourself. “Who do I despise or dislike? Why? What is it about them that hooks me?

Then work to eliminate these attitudes. Remind yourself that God loves us all. Am I looking down on these people?

Isn’t there anything about them that I might admire? Or feel compassion for? We can fight our impulses to exclude, to dislike, to fear, and to shame. And we can do it without punishing ourselves when we fail, because we’re all in the same boat. This is hard work, but it is work that Jesus has clearly called us to do.

And again, pray for help, courage, and guidance in changing yourself. Pray for patience with yourself. And pray for God to help you keep on with the work. We are all, each one of us, a work in progress.

The importance of this kind of work seems obvious. Not only has Jesus called us to love God and to love one another; not only was this kind of love the mark of the earliest Christian communities; but this kind of love is what can possibly solve the very worst of the world’s problems, if only more people would work toward it.

What’s at the root of racism? Fear of people who are different. What’s at the root of perfectionism? Fear of not measuring up to someone else’s expectations. What’s the root of homophobia? Fear of homosexuals. The very word phobia comes from a Greek word that means “fear.”

I looked up phobia on Google and there are so many different known phobias, I didn’t have time to read the whole list!

I’ve often heard that the cause of this or that war was a need or desire for more territory, but really the root cause is also fear. Wanting more than enough is an ego issue, whether for a person or for a nation, and is really the result of fear of others getting more or getting ahead or whatever.

Another key step in controlling the effects of fear in our lives, is to pay attention to what I usually call fear-mongering. This is when people or institutions use fear to manipulate people. It’s so common in our culture today that I think you can hear it almost every day of the week. The question is whether we can recognize it. Mindfulness is again the key. Question what people say and what they tell you. It’s amazing to me how much fear is spread on the public airwaves and in our daily conversations with people. You don’t have to call anyone on it, but please notice it and mark it for what it is. Otherwise it catches you unaware.

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. . .Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” Let us work so we may truly walk in love as Jesus did. AMEN

4th SUNDAY OF EASTER

1 John 3:16-24

Let me start this morning with a few words about the Lectionary. As you know, the lectionary is the list of readings that specifies what lessons are read on which days. The Lectionary for Sundays runs on a three year cycle, so we refer to Year A, B, or C. In year A we mostly read Gospel lessons from Matthew, in B from Mark, and in C from Luke. Then we start over again.

Since there is no year assigned to John, lessons from John appear in all three years at various times. The Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are narrative stories about the life of Jesus, while John uses the life of Jesus to construct a much more theological exposition about what the life of Jesus meant. John was written latter than the other three.

During Easter season, the story of Doubting Thomas is always read the Sunday after Easter. The third Sunday is always a story of one of Jesus’s appearances to the disciples after the resurrection. The remaining four Easter Sundays, beginning today all use readings from the Gospel of John, in all three years. John is largely used as commentary on the other gospels, an explanation of what they are supposed to mean.

Today might be called Good Shepherd Sunday, as I’m sure you noticed from the Psalm and the Gospel, but this year I want to focus on the reading from the first letter of John. Probably written by an elder of the Johannine community, certainly later than the Gospel of John, this letter is really a sermon or a letter of advice to the community.

The opening line echoes the Gospel reading this morning: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

Then comes this haunting question: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” I say haunting, because so many people in the world live on about $2 /day. And even in this great country, where we use so many of the world’s resources, the number of people going to bed hungry at night is shocking! And that number is still growing.

One of the problems with quoting facts and figures about people in need is that the problem just seems so overwhelming we’d like to forget it. So first remember that no one has to solve all the problems or even any one problem on a large scale. Think local. Do what you can for the people around you.

There are two aspects of giving to others that I’d like to explore. One has to do with the source of our giving. I know that we all give generously to lots of charities. Are we giving just what’s excess to us? Or are we giving of our substance? By that I mean are we actually giving up something ourselves in order to share with others?

When I give decent but old clothes to the clothes Closet, I’m giving what I no longer have use for. I think that’s different from buying a new shirt and donating it instead of keeping it. When I take my contribution to some charity off the top at the beginning of the month, it’s different than if I give them what’s left over the end of the month.

I’m not sure I can explain that difference, but it’s like the widow who gave all she had versus the rich man who gave such a small proportion of his wealth. Just think about this when you consider your charitable gifts.

Secondly, I want us to think about the purpose of our giving. I’m assuming that our purpose is a Christian one, rather than serving our own egos, but am looking beyond that. Do we give just to make up for the shortage that the other party has or are we giving to change the system that created their shortage in the first place?

Giving to make up their shortage is good, and its impact is immediate. The problem is that we probably have to go on giving for some length of time. You know the old saw, give a man a fish and he can feed his family today; give a man a pole and teach him how to fish and you feed his family forever.

This is what makes solar cookers, or micro loans, or giving animals more effective and more appealing than stocking a food shelf. And of course, if we think that solving the world hunger problem is overwhelming, can you imagine what it might take to change the systems, the governments, and the politics on the ground that created the hunger in the first place?

Jesus directly confronted the powers and systems of his day that kept the poor folks in their place, and we know what happened to him for his trouble. It’s no wonder most of us want no part of standing up to the powers that be in protest. It’s dangerous to speak the truth to power in that way.

But at the same time, I want to remind all of us that we have a weapon that was not available to Jesus. We have a vote, and we do not put ourselves at risk when we exercise this power. Whether we think of the School Board, the County Board, the City Council, the state legislature or the national elections, we have a voice in what happens here. We have the chance to vote for those people whom we think will do the most good. Yes, but the most good for whom? For me? For my family? Or for the whole community, the whole state, or the whole nation?

Are we willing to give up some stuff in order that others have a better chance? Do we only support those who will make our lives easier, or do we support those who will consider all of society? Do we support what’s good for the schools only so long as we have children in school, or do we always support what’s good for the schools, because that makes a better community?

It’s an election year and we’ll hear way more about it than we want too, much of it useless information. It is easy to say, “Bah! Humbug! A pox on both your houses!” But that’s clearly a cop-out. Much better to turn the TV off and do some research on the essential issues. And I hope that the question you’ll be asking is this: “Which candidate for this office will make this community better? A better place to live, a better place to raise a family, a better place to work, a better place to grow old. Most important of all, which one will make it a better place for everyone who lives here, not just some.

Yes, I know, Jesus said, “The poor will always be with us.” And I’d say there will always be criminals, whether of the smash and grab sort or the Wall Street sort. However, I’m convinced that the numbers of both would be much less if the middle class were larger.

David and I worked at a soup kitchen several times in the Chicago area. The last time we were there, we saw at least four or five people in line wearing nice kacki pants, Columbia jackets, and boat shoes. And they were not there to scam the system. They had fallen into dire poverty so recently that their wardrobe hadn’t caught up.

“How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Walk in love as Christ loves us. AMEN

Third Sunday of Easter, Luke 24:36b-48

Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ is apparently hungry.

The disciples were huddled behind closed, locked doors, frightened, hiding. Crucifixion is a horrible, horrible way to die, and the Romans were not shy about crucifying friends of friends of enemies of the state, by the thousands if it made their point. So Jesus’s followers hid, terrified, mourning the death of their leader, grieving the loss of their dreams.

They had heard rumors, though; rumors that he was back. Friends had just come back from the road to Emmaus telling them a fantastic tale of actually meeting and eating with Jesus. So they discussed that, and the stories of Mary Magdelene and the other women, who discovered his body missing. As they discussed these things, a hard little seed of well-guarded hope began to quicken deep in their hearts.

And then he was standing there. Right there. A terrifying apparition. Except this particular terrifying apparition looked and spoke exactly like their beloved, lamented master. An ethereal ghost. Except that ghosts don’t say comforting things like “Peace be with you”. A phantom. Except that phantoms don’t know the doubts deep in your heart, and phantoms most certainly don’t ask what’s for dinner.

Jesus stood among them. Murdered but not dead. Beyond the grave, yet flesh and bone. Accepting them exactly as they were, frightened and a touch obtuse, yet gently encouraging them to open their hearts and minds and understand.

There are hundreds, probably thousands of pages of analyses of the events of that day. The age of science makes Jesus’ appearance even further beyond belief today than it must have seemed to the disciples. If we could travel back and examine the flesh that Jesus so calmly offered for inspection, would it really share the precise cellular structure of our own? We cannot travel back, of course, and the factual details are lost to history. I would suggest (may the early church fathers forgive me) that it just doesn’t matter. I do not mean to suggest that the resurrection didn’t happen or that it doesn’t matter – as surely as you and I gather together to worship this morning, it did happen and it does matter. I mean that the physics and biology of it is, well, irrelevant. Even Albert Einstein said, “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”

The disciples‘ experience was authentic, sacred and transformative. The Son of God stood before them, having defeated death, owning his humanity, his suffering, the world’s suffering. The disciples were transformed by his presence, his reality. He nourished them by his true presence just as surely as they shared their meal with him.

Jesus shares himself with us still as we journey on. As St. Theresa of Avilla said, “The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.” Christ commissions us, just as he commissioned the disciples….

You are the witnesses of these things.

Witness? Really, witness? We’ve all experienced religious “witness” that conveys moral superiority and disdainful condescension more than joyful proclamation of selfless love, compassion and life transformation.

Witness! I’m Episcopalian, you may be thinking. I don’t exhort. I don’t proclaim. I don’t sit in the front pews, and I don’t so much as whisper a prayer in public without a prayer book in my hand. Not to worry. Although witness is by its nature courageous, it need not be dramatic. To paraphrase Henri Nouwen, “Ministry”, or in this case witness, “means the ongoing attempt to put one’s own search for God, with all the moments of pain and joy, despair and hope, at the disposal of those who want to join this search but do not know how.” Witness is sharing with the world our relationship with the risen Christ as our lives are transformed in His hunger – his hunger for love, for justice, for peace.

Today is Earth Day. A day to remember that we share this fragile earth, our island home, not only with our human brothers and sisters, but with all of God’s creation.

Hear what our House of Bishops had to say about our own repentance and witness in their pastoral teaching (A Pastoral Teaching from the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church; Quito, Ecuador, September 2011) “Our current environmental challenges call us to ongoing forms of repentance: we must turn ourselves around, and come to think, feel, and act in new ways…The practice of Christ-centered mindfulness, that is, the habitual recollection of Christ, calls believers to a deepened awareness of the presence of God in their own lives, in other people, and in every aspect of the world around us. Such spiritual perception should make faithful people alert to the harmful effects of our lifestyles, attentive to our carbon footprint (ii) and to the dangers of overconsumption. It should make us profoundly aware of the gift of life and less prone to be ecologically irresponsible in our consumption and acquisition….This is the appointed time for all God’s children to work for the common goal of renewing the earth as a hospitable abode for the flourishing of all life. We are called to speak and act on behalf of God’s good creation.”

You are the witnesses of these things.

Bishop Spong posits that we cannot know God, we can only experience God. The disciples experienced God in that upper room. We experience God in Jesus, in the Eucharist, in prayer, in community…and in creation. We are joined, physically and spiritually with all of God’s creation. It is the source of our water, our food, our shelter, the very air we breathe. Care for the earth in all its vulnerability is a witness for justice, for peace, for love and for life. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote passionately, “Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light! Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will comprehend it ceaselessly, more and more every day. And you will at last come to love the whole world with an abiding, universal love.” Abiding, universal love – this is the gift Christ revealed behind closed doors so many centuries ago.

Cherish the joy as you love and serve Christ in all creation. Embrace your doubts and your wonderment. God knows them and they will inform your journey. Live your witness as a child of the resurrection.

Alleluia, Christ is risen. (The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.) Thanks be to God.

John 20:19-31

Here we are with another day when we read the same Gospel every year. Today, the so-called story of Doubting Thomas is always the Gospel for the second Sunday of Easter. I suppose it makes sense, in a way, to read this on the first Sunday after the resurrection. After all, the resurrection story is a wild tale, one that would be easy to dismiss, and yet one that is vital to the people following Jesus.

If the death of Jesus was the end, the followers would have scattered back to their homes and professions, as the Romans fully expected they would. Instead they regrouped, and thanks to their post-Easter experiences with Jesus, formed a new people, disciples committed to carrying on his work.

And so John tells us that the disciples were huddled behind closed doors in fear of the authorities on Sunday night, the same day as the resurrection. For some reason, the disciple Thomas was not with them. Maybe it was his turn to go out and buy food, slipping through the souk in Jerusalem, hoping not to be recognized as a Jesus follower.

When he arrives back at the place of hiding, he hears that Jesus has appeared to the disciples while he was gone. And not only did he miss out on seeing the risen Lord, he did not receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Ouch!

So Thomas refuses to believe them. He’s from Missouri and has to be shown in order to believe. A week later Jesus shows up again. After greeting them with the Peace, Jesus speaks directly to Thomas and encourages him to touch his scars. Thomas acknowledges him as Lord and God immediately.

Notice that Jesus does not chastise Thomas for doubting or for demanding proof. He does say those who can believe without seeing are especially blessed, but he casts no aspersions on Thomas for not being able to do so.

That’s the part that always catches me, and holds me up, because for years I struggled with all sorts of doubt. Now I just live with much of it because the literal truth about many things no longer matters to me. I hope it is significant for all of you, because most of us live through periods of doubt, and it is encouraging to know that Jesus did not condemn it.

It’s also of great significance for all of us because we belong to a religious tradition that, at least until very recently, did not condemn doubt. Questions of faith and belief were always welcomed in the churches I attended, even if that wasn’t necessarily true at home!

I have learned that there are some people who have never questioned what they were taught as children. I grew up questioning almost everything. Most people experience periods of doubt somewhere along the way, maybe times we refer to as ‘dry spells’ when our spirits seem to lag and cannot find refreshment anywhere.

The significant question may be this: what do you do when you find yourself in such a period? What do you do when doubts rise up and create confusion in your soul? Do you push them away and refuse to deal with it, hoping perhaps it will just go away? Do you chew on it and go looking for answers? Do you take action in some other way – leave church, change your address, change your world view?

I’ve tried all of the above, and I’ve returned to the fold not out of newfound faith, but by choosing to act as though I believed, because I realized that people who believe what Jesus taught make the world a better place. It has helped me a great deal to consider what Crossan and Borg say about faith. That it is not about believing a set of statements about reality. It’s not about confessing the truth of a set of beliefs about God, Jesus, etc. It’s about trusting God. It’s about trusting that God loves us and will walk with us through whatever comes our way.

That is the kind of faith that gets me through the rough patches and the dry spells that I still experience at times. And it’s a good thing, because the specifics of what I believe about the Bibles stories have changed at least three or four times in my life, and may well do so again.

I am so grateful for being part of a church that can accept that! I am so grateful for being part of a church that supports those who are seeking or those who are experiencing a dark night of the soul, or those who just can’t swallow our traditional theology.

When Father Bob was here we had a number of conversations about how I couldn’t accept what he was preaching. Those conversations never convinced either of us to change our minds, but neither did he in any way condemn my questioning or my inability to go where he was. In how many other churches would that have been true?

I see the current struggle within the Anglican communion as a direct assault on this part of our tradition of tolerance of different understandings. In the tradition of Anglicanism that I know and have experienced, what binds us together is worship. We gather around the book of Common Prayer to praise God, to worship God, and to give thanks to God.

And every time we come to communion we have the chance to lay our doubts, our fears, our concerns, our grief, our anger, and our hurt, on the altar. We have an opportunity for resurrection ourselves, by laying those things on the altar, by giving them up to God, so that we can, in fact, go forth from church in peace.

The so-called Southern Bishops, mainly those from Africa and Asia, want to make the Anglican Communion into a confessional church – that is, one that is based on what we say we believe. The history of confessional churches is plagued by one schism after another, one breaking off into another denomination after another, because membership requires a certain set of beliefs.

Had I been brought up in such a tradition I would now be a none – not an N-U-N, but a N-O-N-E. A spiritual person with no affiliation to a church. So I hope that the Episcopal Church will not toe the line for these dissident Bishops.

I want this church to remain a haven for people who are like our so-called doubting Thomas and for seekers who are looking for answers to those perplexing questions about who we are and why we’re here. I also suspect that if all the nones in this community knew this about the Episcopal church, our church would be full each week, not that all of them would come, but I do think some of them would.

I just haven’t figured out how to let them know this basic truth about our church, that we welcome doubters and sinners and seekers and questioners, and those who aren’t. Because that’s who we are too. And we find comfort in the Eucharist and we find comfort in one another. Thanks be to God.

EASTER

Alleluia, Christ is risen! (Response: The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)

Have you ever noticed or wondered why this ancient Easter greeting is in the present tense? Why do we say Christ is risen instead of Christ has risen? I suspect that the earliest followers of Jesus, especially those who had not known him in the flesh, still had such a vivid experience of him that only the present tense could convey it. In other words, the resurrection of Jesus was not just an event of the past, but something that continues into the present.

But for generations of followers, the world they experienced was much like the world of the disciples. Here we are in the 21st Century, 20 centuries later, in a time and place so different from theirs. What can the resurrection of Jesus mean to us?

As you know, there are any number of ways to explain the resurrection. Some say God stepped into history to perform a miracle, so that Jesus walked the earth again after his death for 50 days before being taken up into heaven. Some people claim it was all a hoax. Some claim that the death of Jesus was a sacrifice demanded by God to pay for our sins. Some see the death and resurrection of Jesus as a metaphor for our own salvation – some with the condition that we must be “true” followers, some without that condition. Mostly the focus has been on what happens after we die.

Of course, the obvious problem is that we can’t know much for sure about what really happens then. So what I’ve been thinking about this week, instead, is what the death and resurrection of Jesus means to us in this life, here and now.

As I mentioned on Maunday Thursday, most religions that require sacrifices to their God or gods, are in fact feeding God, but in Christianity God feeds us. God fed the Israelites in the wilderness and God feeds us in the communion meal. In a book called “Practice Resurrection” by Eugene Peterson and Peter Santucci, the authors say, “The most important thing about any one of us is not what we do for God, but what God does for us.”

We hear language in our rituals of baptism and communion that specifically refers to the death and resurrection of Jesus. But now I want you to also think about your own lives here on earth. How have you experienced resurrection? How have you experienced death?

For example, the death of my mother just after my 14th birthday was also a kind of death for me. It was an end to life with a mother and the beginning of life without one. I had to walk through the grief and dreadfulness and change that that event had in my life. And it was only later that I could see the resurrection part of the story. The new life that came from that was a new independence. For example, would my father have given me a checking account and a monthly allowance if my mother hadn’t died? I doubt it. What I learned from that experience alone was invaluable over time. And there’s a real way in which I can claim that learning to manage my own income saved me in later life.

I probably don’t have to explain much about how divorce was a kind of death. Or that there was so much resurrection that followed. Each of you will have your own stories of death and resurrection. Many are similar, many are unique.

Death may mean repenting, letting go, leaving behind, saying goodbye. Death may be a death, of a pet, of a loved one. It may be the death of a friendship. It may be a moving away from what we know into what we don’t. Going away to school, leaving old friends, old ways of living, old world views, old understanding of our selves and our place in the world. Death, maybe even especially these small deaths that happen in life, can be very painful and difficult. But haven’t you noticed that it is these same painful and difficult experiences that help us to grow and mature and learn?

Granted, it doesn’t seem fair that we have to suffer to learn new things, but I sure haven’t seen much improvement in myself without some effort, or pain, or suffering. In other words, there doesn’t seem to be any resurrection without some kind of death.

The resurrections that follow such deaths are the signs of new life in us, new friendships, new ideas, new ways of being in the world, new understandings of who we are and why we are here.

We can try to avoid these events; we can try to control our lives in order to ignore, evade, dodge, and minimize the painful moments, the mini deaths that come to all of us. But it does not work in the long run. In a very real sense, what God accomplished in the resurrection of Jesus was to help us see, feel, and understand more fully that God is present with us in the here and now. Again, in talking about how to practice resurrection, Peterson and Santucci say, “The hardest thing for us is this reorientation from living anxiously by our wits and muscle to living effortlessly in the world of God’s active presence.”

So it seems to me that the death and resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate visible sign to us of God’s grace, which assures us that there’s always the chance to change, to repent, to turn over a new leaf, to grow up , to mature , to become the best that we can be, to be all that God intends us to be. And that God will be present with us in that work.

The life of Jesus shows us what God wants us to be, to be loving, compassionate, caring disciples, to offer our service to others, to stand up for peace and justice, to try by our lives and our actions to help bring the Kingdom of God into being right here where we live.

In other words, we can live resurrected lives right here and now. That is what it means to be an Easter people.

Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleulia! AMEN

Exodus 12:1-14

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Once again this year I was surprised to discover that the readings for Maundy Thursday are the same every year. Aside from reflections on what it means to have a failing memory, I wondered what it would be like to prepare a sermon on these lessons for the 20th time? And then wondered what it is like for you to have to listen to a sermon on these lessons for the 20th time! Or 40th time!

So, let me start with a reminder. The reason we have only one set of lessons seems to be this. In the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the last supper happens on Passover and they tell the story of Jesus instituting the Eucharist on that night. In the gospel of John, the last supper is not the feast of Passover and there is no institution of the Eucharist, but instead the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.

To bypass this discrepancy and yet to include it all in this day’s worship, the writers of the RCL use the passage from Corinthians to recap the stories from the synoptic gospels and use the Exodus lesson to make plain the connections between that story and the Eucharist.

It’s fairly easy to see that if either part, Eucharist or foot washing, were left out, the day would not be complete. And the Exodus story amplifies the Eucharist so that all three stories have great significance.

In asking us to remember him in a ritual of bread and wine, Jesus not only calls to mind the Exodus story, but also revises it in significant ways. In traditional theology, he becomes the sacrificial lamb, while the bread and wine represent his body and blood. The theme of moving from slavery to freedom from Exodus is still present. In preaching forgiveness of sins and in giving us the ritual of communion, Jesus gives us recurring opportunities to find new life and new freedom.

What hit me this year is this realization: in the sacrificial system of Judaism, as in most religious traditions that require sacrifice, people are required to feed God. They kill animals or even people to feed God; they bring their crops to the altar to feed God, or they set part of each meal out in the woods for God to have. They do this in the hope of keeping God on their side. It’s basically a system of bribery or quid pro quo. I’ll feed you if you’ll take care of me.

In Christianity God feeds us, as he fed the Israelites in the wilderness. We come to the altar not to feed God, but to be fed by God. In our tradition the priest blesses the bread and the wine, which human hands have made from God’s creation, so that they are made holy. That’s so that in eating and drinking we may also be made holy, made whole, re-made in God’s image, healed, forgiven and reminded who we are, God’s beloved children.

That’s why I sometimes say before communion that the altar is God’s table and all God’s children are welcome to the feast. This is an Episcopal church, but the altar belongs to God, and so do all of us.

Both Jesus and many of the prophets make clear to us that God does not NEED anything from us – not burnt offerings, not crops, not money, not even prayer. But if we recognize who we are, and recognize God as our higher power, then our gratitude will result in both personal sacrifice and service.

Remember the words of Micah? “He hath shown thee, O people, what is right: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” And remember the commandments of Jesus to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Notice that there is NO mention of giving any stuff to God here.

The money we give to church, especially what is given from our own substance and not just given from what’s excess, is given to maintain the community and to reach out to the wider community in God’s name. It’s not a bribe or a quid pro quo, but it may indeed be a personal sacrifice, one we’re willing to give in response to God’s love for us.

The Gospel story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples reminds us of how important it is to serve others. It is the other side of the communion coin, so to speak. It takes both worship and service to build a Christian life and to build the kingdom of God. The worship, especially the worship in a community, build us up to do our work in the world.

I know many people who do great work in the world and do not go to church. I admire them a lot and suspect they find their strength and encouragement in other sorts of communities. I am encouraged by other communities as well, but only church provides the faith, the courage, and the rational for me to keep going, to keep trying, to work for transformation both of myself and the wider community.

The lessons of Maundy Thursday remind us forcefully that worship without service is meaningless and service without worship may be hollow. By that I mean that Eucharist constantly reminds us of our opportunities for re-birth, for transformation, for progress in becoming the person God meant us to be. That in turn drives our desire to serve others, so that our acts of service rise out of an authentic attitude of selflessness. We all have had experience with service that is not like this, but rather springs from selfish desires of one sort or another. That sort of service may still accomplish something in this world, but it probably will not help to build the kingdom here on earth.

The key to Christian service is that it arises from love, both love of God and love of others. John’s Gospel highlights this when Jesus commands his disciples to love one another. That’s one of the ways the early church grew – because the members loved one another and that drew others to them.

Service arising from love is what builds the kingdom. There’s a worship dismissal I’ve heard several times that goes something like this: “Our worship is ended. Now our service begins.” I really like this because it makes such a direct connection between the two activities that are the mark of Christians.

Our worship is ended. Now our service begins. Thanks be to God

Palm Sunday; Mark 14:1 – 15:47

The Gospel we are about to read is at the center of our faith. We hear most of it in smaller, more digestible chunks at different times. This is the only time of year that we get the chance to hear the whole story altogether.

Next week we celebrate the risen, divine Christ. Today we grapple with the reality of Jesus the man as he lived and shared and suffered and died.

We, the church, have vast and varied theological constructs surrounding Jesus’ death on the cross, some more palatable or popular than others: substitutionary atonement, ransom theory, Christus victor, the moral example theory, the list goes on- all to explain why Jesus died. There are deep truths to be learned in exploring these theories. But the fact is, die he did – not for the sake of theology, but for the sake of humankind.

Today I am asking you to leave the theological constructs and the whys and wherefores behind. Listen. Really listen. Open your mind and your heart and live these few hours with Jesus. Know the gritty, salty human reality of betrayal, violence and self-centered grasping for power. Feel the weight of the cross, but more importantly experience the hope inherent in the all-encompassing, self-emptying love of the man who died upon it, servant and king.

We will not have a sermon today. We will have a brief period of silence after the reading to allow the Spirit time to resonate within our hearts and minds and souls. To hear what the Spirit is saying to the church; what the Spirit is saying to us.

Third Sunday of Lent; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, John 2:13-22

I wonder, have any of you noticed the weather? (I can’t believe I’m asking a room full of Minnesotans that question. Do we ever not notice the weather?) But this weather… May I say, “wow!, not to mention ‘thanks be to God” It got to almost 60 yesterday, beautiful, bright sunshine. And it looks like it’ll be just as phenomenal today. Makes you think about spring cleaning. Opening up the windows, letting that fresh, clean air rush in, and all the dust and cobwebs and stale detritus of the winter flow out.

In Jesus time, it was Passover cleaning. At Passover, traditionally, the home would be cleaned, every inch. Every bit of dust eradicated, every spare morsel of food consumed or thrown away. All the physical detritus and waste of the household would be systematically eliminated.

We are near Passover today as we join Jesus, and he is engaged in some serious housecleaning. The disciples have been called, and have responded to something deeply compelling in this extraordinary rabbi. Already, he has prophesied and spoken authoritatively of things they can barely fathom. They have witnessed the conversion of water to wine in the wedding in Cana. Now they travel to the temple with Jesus.

Understand, saying that they go to the temple is not like saying they go to church on Sunday. Before the temple’s destruction, it was a place of worship, certainly, but so much more. The temple was at the very center of Jewish faith. The temple was not just a house of God, it was God’s house, his pad, his home address, whereabout He put up His divine feet of an evening and settled in for a spot of tea.

The temple was where one came to participate in the complex system of tithes and sacrifices demanded of the pious Jew. Sacrifices required unblemished animals of sundry varieties – who can manage an entire pilgrimage with an unblemished animal? So there must be vendors at the site – a place to acquire such an animal. And you can’t pay for a sacrifice to God with a coin bearing the image of the false God, the emperor Caesar. But that is what you have – it’s the coin of the realm. So there need to be money changers there, to change your tainted coins for Tyrian shekel, with no visage on the coin. It’s noisy. It’s crowded. It’s what must be in order to do the right sacrificial thing.

The disciples are devout people accompanying this charismatic, extraordinary Rabbi to the holiest place they know.

Can you imagine their reaction to Jesus’s dramatic outburst? This gentle, devout man of glorious, flowing, divine ideas goes stark raving mad, seemingly. We call this the “cleansing of the temple”, which has such a wholesome sound to it, but His acts scream of anger and violence. He bodily throws tables. Money soars through the air, feathers are flying. The man brandishes a whip. A WHIP, for heaven’s sake.

This is not gentle Jesus, meek and mild, and it’s a bit, unnerving. We like our kind, sweet Jesus, healer, protector, always in our corner, aways on our side when we’re down. We like that Jesus. This guy we’re seeing today, well, he’s not very nice, is he? These people are following the rules, doing their best to make sure that the system keeps running, enabling everybody else to do the “right” thing. Maybe the worship gets a little lost, but the institution gets protected.

Consider the possibility that this is disturbing because it forces us to confront the notion that following Jesus is not about being nice. In fact, as Father Richard Rohr points out, “….the word ‘nice’ is not in the New Testament. Not once.”

All four of the Gospels contain this story, with slight variations. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the story occurs at the end of Jesus’ ministry, soon before he is arrested and eventually crucified. The event makes sense historically in that part of Jesus’ ministry as it would likely bring various authorities, already in tension with Jesus’ message to the breaking point. John, however, places it very early in Jesus’ ministry. It’s unlikely that there were 2 such events, and unlikely that John simply goofed. He put the story here, at the beginning, to tell us who Jesus is. Jesus is God. As such, He is the disrupter, the radical, the passionate advocate of clearing out all the detritus that stands between God’s people and God.

Lent is a time of spiritual housecleaning. A time when we, individually and as a church, can clear away the detritus that stands between us and God. As we saw with the Temple, this most likely is not a matter of rooting out the deep evil core. The money changers and the merchants served a purpose, keeping the institution going. But the whole system had fallen into these comfortable habits that served to keep the institution running, and failed to realize that those habits had become a block to the worship of God, clogging the courtyard, excluding the poor and the unclean, providing a venue for arrogance and corruption. What comfortable habits do we as individuals fall into that block the worship of God? What comfortable habits do we, as a church, mindlessly maintain that may block access to the poor, the lost, the lonely, the “different”?

Like at the temple, this spiritual housecleaning may not be a sweet, pretty, gentle process. We go through our daily lives, dependent on our habitual rhythms and our pre-conceived notions of God and right. It seems insane to give up those things which are comfortable and fit us well. And yet, “We must,” as theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.” We must embrace “God’s foolishness (which) is wiser than human wisdom.” Expend the spiritual, emotional effort to purge the debris that has arisen between yourself and God. Dare a flash of anger at the institutionalized wisdom that hampers any person’s access to the words of everlasting life.

anna murdock writes, “When tables are overturned and money is scattered, when righteous indignation of our Lord is seen and heard, the least, the lost and the lonely become visible and we become a voice in their gouging world.

When tables are overturned, we might begin to overturn shattered
lives. When feathers fly, we might begin to soar.”

Praise be to God!

Amen

Second Sunday of Lent; Mark 8:31-38

I do feel bad for Peter. Peter, who rarely seems to open his mouth without putting his foot in it, finally got the right answer. In last week’s lesson, which occurs in the scripture just before our reading today, Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you think that I am?” Peter finally gets the right answer, “You are the Messiah.” He has no time to bask in finally getting it right. Jesus swears the disciples to secrecy on that subject and goes on to describe what that means. As he does so, Peter learns that he did not have it so “right” after all. The Messiah is the savior. For a first century Jew that meant the one who would break the yoke of Roman control on Judaism. The mighty conquerer. The one who would restore Israel to all her former glory. Peter and the other disciples pinned all their hopes on Jesus to be the one who led that charge.

So what was this that their proposed savior was saying? “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” No, wait, that’s not right. That’s not right at all. “Be killed.” is definitely NOT part of the plan. Peter apparently missed the “rise again” part entirely. We tend to gloss over things that we don’t understand, I imagine Peter did the same. Never one to keep his thoughts to himself, he let Jesus know he should cool it with the suffering and death talk.

Peter had it wrong again. Peter was thinking in terms of the here and now, earthly power and earthly reward. Jesus redirects his thinking.

Jesus speaks now to the crowd, not just to a select few. This is an invitation to all who would hear. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” This is an eminently disagreeable invitation.

The cross has powerful meaning to us as we look back at it from a post Easter perspective. We see it in the post-Easter light of the resurrection. It had powerful meaning to the disciples and the crowd as well. It was one of the predominant tools of public torture and execution utilized by the mighty Roman Empire, and Empire which did not take kindly to upstarts, rebels or threats of any kind to their established order.

Those who would follow Jesus looked to him to overthrow the Empire; he offered them a gruesome death on the cross. Over time the disciples came to set their minds on divine things. They worked and lived and died for the sake of the good news. It could not have seemed like good news that day, as they were forced to dismantle their preconceived, very human notions of what it meant to follow the Son of Man.

In his work, “Whistling in the Dark” theologian Frederick Buechner posits that after he was baptized in the river Jordan, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness asking himself the question of what it meant to be Jesus. During the 40 days of Lent Christians should ask themselves what it means to be Christians. (Feasting on the Word)

Deny yourself.
Take up your cross.
Follow me.

This must have sounded horrible to 1st century ears. It has been abused since then. This formula was used to quell the restlessness of slaves in pre-civil war America. Slavery was their cross, they were told. Their reward would come in heaven. The poor have at various times been told the same thing. The reward will come. Abused wives were given the same advice, “deny yourself”, this is what Christ would want. This is your cross to bear. (Renee Rico – Midrash discussion, 2012)

Is that really what Jesus meant? Didn’t Jesus speak for the poor, the weak, the ill, the marginalized?

Jesus didn’t mean to submit to being abused, or enslaved, or marginalized for the sake of being abused. He bid us to take up the cross before us, not to carry a meaningless burden thrust upon us. “Those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” His ministry, his life, his good news was a message of life, of truth, of love, not of suffering for the sake of suffering.

It is unlikely, I hope, that any of us will actually be asked to give up our physical lives to follow Christ. That doesn’t mean we get to sit back and think, “Gosh, sure glad that era’s over”, and remain otherwise unchanged.

Deny yourself
Take up your cross
Follow me

I heard a story this week of a young man in East Germany (before the wall came down) who chose, at the age of 14, to be confirmed in his church, in this officially atheist country. We was the only confirmand in his town. He chose to follow Christ when it was politically, socially, culturally the “wrong” path. (Nancy Price – Midrash discussion, 2012)

I heard a story this week of a 5 year old who agreed to give a transfusion that might save his critically ill sister. Partway through the procedure he asked if he would begin to die soon. He hadn’t understood that the transfusion allowed them both to live, he just knew that his sister needed what he had, and so he gave it.

They denied themselves for the sake of Christ, for the sake of love.

Christ’s cross was a cross of sacrifice, a cross of selfless love. Will we pick up our own crosses and follow Him?

We have daily opportunities to give ourselves in the service of love, compassion, justice, peace. The stories I mention are touching, but not unique. You had a chance last week to serve a wonderful soup supper to benefit the hungry. You had a chance last week to stop some ugly gossip, or to call your congressperson about an unjust practice. You had a chance to pray, when you might have preferred a good mystery novel. You had a chance to lend a listening ear, or to hold an angry tongue. You had a chance to turn off the TV of an evening and call someone who would otherwise be lonely. You will have those chances again. It may mean giving up status, or wealth, or time, or security, or more. Jesus does not promise us easy, he promises us life.

As we ask ourselves during this 40 day Lenten journey what it means to be Christian, may God grant us the strength and courage to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Christ in our daily lives.

Thanks be to God.

Amen